"It's got to do with energy and mass," he says, launching himself with confidence. After all, this is all in a day's work for Mr. Zaloom, who plays the crazy scientist Beakman on the Saturday show "Beakman's World," on CBS.

"There's a tremendous amount of energy in mass -- potential energy," he says, then pauses. "No, not potential energy, that's something else. . . . " He rearranges his fork and knife on the plate in front of him. "Well, it's E=mc , right? And c stands for the speed of light." He babbles in similar fashion for perhaps a minute more, until his 11-year-old daughter, Amanda, pipes up.

"He doesn't know half the science stuff he does on the show," she says. Mr. Zaloom glares at Amanda, who lives in Vermont with her mother, then grimaces theatrically and turns back to his trout at the Rainbow Sweets Bakery and Cafe.

And yet, as Beakman, Mr. Zaloom practices a decidedly cool brand of science -- "Pee-wee's Playhouse" meets Mr. Wizard. It's scientific inquiry at breakneck speed, replete with bells and whistles (literally) and a patina of hipness designed to make science seem anything but nerdy. Presiding over a kaleidoscopic, labyrinthine set is Mr. Zaloom, dressed as Beakman in a chartreuse lab coat and a dark fright wig that he calls "the road kill," with the help of his perky assistant, Liza (Eliza Schneider), and Lester (Mark Ritts), a guy dressed up as a laboratory rat. (The "Beakman's World" press kit describes Mr. Ritts's role as "pseudo-rodent.")

The show, based on the Universal Press Syndicate comic strip "You Can With Beakman and Jax" by Jok Church, was first broadcast in syndication in 1992 and moved to CBS in September 1993. It is also shown on cable, on Sunday evenings on the Learning Channel.

The show, which is produced by a partnership of Columbia Pictures Television, Columbia Pictures Television Distribution and Universal Belo Productions, received a boost last year when the Federal Communications Commission announced its intention to toughen enforcement of the Children's Television Act of 1990. Among other things, that law requires television stations to show that they have addressed the "educational and informational" needs of children, a requirement that some stations had tried to fulfill by running cartoon shows like "The Jetsons" and deeming them educational.

"The ratings don't have to be great in order for the show to survive," he says, adding that its ratings are "decent."

Michael Eisenberg, a CBS research executive, said that in its first season, "Beakman's World" compiled a Nielsen rating of 2.7. That compares with a 6.8 rating for the second half-hour of "Garfield and Friends," CBS's most popular Saturday children's show, which starts at 9 A.M. Each point represents 942,000 households.

Asked how "Beakman's World" was doing, Mr. Eisenberg said the network was "not unhappy" with its performance, although it doesn't have the appeal of cartoons like "Garfield" and "Mutant Ninja Turtles."

"It's a new show and it's a live show," Mr. Eisenberg said. "New shows take time to find their audience, and live shows traditionally do not do as well as cartoons."

He said the show is carried by about 200 of the network's 210 affiliates and is broadcast over about 96 percent of the country. The F.C.C.'s 1993 announcement about children's programming, he added, "certainly didn't hurt" the show's future.

Taped using a wide-angle lens, tight shots and ultrafast graphics, the show appears to the viewer to be on the verge of reeling out of control. On camera, Mr. Zaloom, as the manic Beakman, answers questions sent in from viewers all over the United States and Canada and takes on subjects like levers, thermodynamics, pain ("why does pain hurt?") and, of course, the theory of relativity.

"Sometimes the show is pretty complicated," interjects Amanda, who, having finished lunch, is killing time playing poker with a fellow sixth-grader, Nicko Rubin, at a nearby table. "The one on levers, I didn't get at first. But then, after a while, I was able to understand it."

The show is punctuated by "Fast Facts" delivered rapid-fire by Mr. Zaloom (example: "a snail can have up to 25,000 teeth!") and experiments like making rockets out of plastic soda bottles. (children are exhorted to seek adult supervision).

Mr. Zaloom, who is 42, was raised in Garden City, L.I., and began his career while still a theater major at Goddard College in Plainfield, Vt., working with the internationally acclaimed Bread and Puppet Theater, based about 35 miles away in Glover. As a puppeteer and performance artist, Mr. Zaloom spent years performing highly political works -- which he wrote, staged, directed and often produced himself -- in venues ranging from community halls and college theaters to Lincoln Center and La Mama E.T.C.